John SC Abbott and Self-Interested Motherhood
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Capitalizing on Mother: John S.C. Abbott and Self-interested Motherhood CAROLYN J. LAWES She who was first in the transgression, must yet be the principal earthly instrument in the restoration. ... Oh mothers! reflect upon the power your Maker has placed in your hands. There is no earthly influence to be compared with yours God has constituted you the guardians and the controllers ofthe human family. John S.C. Abbott' N THE EARLY nineteenth century, middle-class Americans rushed to rehabilitate the image of women. New England's IPuritans had castigated women as the daughters of Eve, re- sponsible for the introduction of sin into the world and the damnation of humankind.^ But Americans ofthe late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries stood this analysis upon its head: The research for this article was generously supported by a Kate B. and Hall J. Peterson Fellowship at the American Antiquarian Society. The author also wishes to thank Scott E. Casper, David J. Garrow, Julie Goodson-Lawes, T'homas G. Knoles, Sandra Pryor, Caroline F. Sloat, Elizabeth Alice White, Karin Wulf, and the anonymous readers uf the manuscript for their invaluable advice and suppon. 1. John S.C. Abbott, The Mother at Home: Or, the Principles of Maternal Duty (Boston, 1^33)' I4ÍÍ-49- The Mother at Home 'io\á more than a quarter of a million copies and went through numerous editions and printings. 2. See. far example. Mary Maples Dunn, 'Saints and Sisters: Congregational and Quaker Women in the Early Colonial Period,' in Janet Wilson James, ed.. Women in Avu-7ican Religion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1980): 27-46; Lonna M. Malmsheirner, 'Daughters of Zion: New England Roots of American Feminism,' New England Quarterly 50 (September 1977): 484-504; Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, 'Vertuous Women Found: New England Ministerial Literature, 1668-1735,' in James, ed.. Women in Amirican Religion, 67-Sj; Carol F Karlsen, TAe Devil in the Shape of A Woman: Witchœifrin Colonial New England (New York: Norton, 1987); Mary Potter, 'Gender Equality and Ciendcr Hierarchy in Calvin's Theology,'Si^tr 11 (1986): 725-39. CAROLYN J. LAWES is assistant professor of history at Old Dominion Universitv. I Copyright © 2000 by American Antiquarian Society 343 344 American Antiquarian Society in tbeir role as mothers, women had the power to save not only themselves but all others. Largely the creation of women, the Republican Motber served equally ber family and ber nation by bringing up ber sons to be virtuous citizens and ber daughters to be patriotic motbers like berself. But if Repubhcan Motberbood permitted some women to lay claim to civic incorporation, bisto- rians argue, it also delayed tbe debate over what other roles tbey might play. It was an article of faith in the early republic that pol- itics was inherently corrosive of virtue and mothers must guard their purity, and thus that of the new nation, by remaining aloof from the rough and tumble of politics.^ At tbe same time, the family itself became less hierarchical, more affectionate, and cen- tered around the mother. Maternal love kept the new middle- class family together even while the burden of child rearing fell to tbe women. Antebellum motberhood was thus an honorable role. But it was not an altogetber appeabng one. Indeed, wbat women 3. For Republican Motherhotid, see Mary Beth Norton, Liberty's Daugbtcrs: The Revolutiotjary Experience of American Women, ly^o-iS^o (Boston: Little-Brown, 1980); Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980); Ruth H. Bloch, 'American Feminine Ideals in Transition: The Rise ofthe Moral Mother, lyS^-iSi^,' Feminist Struiies 4 (1978): 101-26; Ruth H, Bloch, 'The Gendered Meanings of Virtue in Revolutionary America,' Signs 13 (Autumn 1987): 37-58; Elaine Forman Crane, 'Religion and Rebellion: Women of Faith in the .American War for Independence,' in Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, eds., Religion in a Revolutionary Age (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994), 52-86; Sara M. Evans, Bom for Liberty: A History of Women in America (New York: Free Press, 1990), 57-59; Jan Lewis, 'Mother's Love: The Construction of an Emotion in Nineteenth-Century America,' in Andrew E. Bames and Peter N. Steams, eds.. Social History and Issues in Human Conscimmess (New York; New York University Press, 1989), 109-29; Jan Lewis, 'The Republican Wife: Virtue and Seduction in the Early Republic,' Willia?n and Mary Quarterly 44 (1987): 689-721; Roseinarie Zagarri, 'Morals, Manners, and the Republican Mother,' American Quarterly 44 (1992): 192-215; Rosemarie Zagarri, 'The Rights of Man and Woman in Post-Revolutionary America,' William and Mary Quarterly 55 (1998): 203-30. Margaret Nash offers a dissenting interpretation in 'Rethinking Republican Motherhood: Benjamin Rush and the Young Ladies' Academy of V^ùX^AsXphi-i,' Journal of tbe Early Republic 17 (1997): 171-91- Recent studies have begun to explore the extent to which women did, in fact, play a role in antebellum politics even without the ballot; see, for example, Mary P. Ryan, Women in Public: Between Bannety and Ballots, 182^-1880 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990); Elizabeth R. Varon, We Mean to Be Counted: White Women an4 Politics in Antebellum Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998); Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray, 'Whig Women, Politics, and Culture in the Campaign of 1840: Three Perspectives from Massachusetts,'J'oan!tf/o/í¿e EíiHy Republic 17 (1997): 277-315- Capitalizing on Mother 345 themselves gained from the new matemahsm is unclear. Motherhood was 'time-consuming and exhausting,' historians as- sert, a 'dead-end' occupation that demanded that a woman sacrifice her own hopes and ambitions, and sometimes even her life, for the greater good of society and so that her family would not have to.4 Analysis ofthe Reverend John S.C. Abbott's best-selling ad^dce books The Mother at Ho?ne (1833) and The Child at Home (1834), when viewed in the context of the community in which they were written, suggests a rather different interpretation of antebellum motherhood. For Abbott, pastor ofthe orthodox Congregational Calvinist Church of Worcester, Massachusetts, from 1830 to 1835, the good mother was a formidable woman, capable of com- manding reverence and compelhng obedience to her will. Abbott did not intend to revise gender roles, but under the influence of the mothers of his congregation his works directly addressed the changing circumstances that confronted this generation of 4. For early work on women and the family, see, for example, Keith E. Melder, The Beginnings of Sisterhood: The American Women's Rights Movement, iSoo-i8$o (New York: SchfKken Books, 1977); Carl Degler, At Odds: Women and the Fa?nily in America from the Revolution to the Present (New York: Oxford Universit)' Press, 1980). For motherhood, see, for example, Catherine M. Schölten, Childhearing in American Society, i6^o-t8^o (New York: New York University Press, 1985), 80-81; Mary P. Ryan, The Empire ofthe Mother: American Writing About Domesticity, iSjo to 1S60 (New York: Institute for Research in History and Naworth Press, 1982), 57-58; Abbott, Mother at Home, 14-16. For changes in the family, see Ryan, Empire ofthe Mother, 45-56; Mary P. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, tjço-186^ (New '^'ork; Cambridge University Press, 1981), especially 145-85; Mary P. Ryan, 'A Woman's Awakening: Evangelical Religion and die Families of Udca, New York, 1800-1840,' in James, ed.. Women in American Religion. 89-110; Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: 'Woman's Sphere' in Ne^i' England, i-j^o—iSj^ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), especially 63-100; Richard A. Meckel, 'Educating a Ministry of Mothers: Evangelical Maternal Associations, i8i5-[86o,' Journal of the Early Republic 2 (1982): 403- 23; Jan Lewis, The Pursuit of Happiness: Family and Valttes in Jefferson's l^irginia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Lewis, 'Mother's Love,' 223-24; Karen Lystra, Searching the Heart: Women, Men, and Romantic Love in Nineteenth-Centuiy America (New York: Oxford University' Press, 1989); Elaine Tyler May, Barren in the Promised Land: Childless Americans and the Pursuit of Happiness (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 36-59. For analysis ofthe social and political tensions of this model of marriage, see Norma Basch, 'Marriage, Morals, and Politics in the Election of 1828,' Journal of American History 80 (1993): 890-918. Quotations from Ryan, Empire of the Mother, 46; Ryan, Cradle ofthe Middle Class, 220; Lewis, 'Mother's Love,' 220-21. American Antiquarian Society women. Abbott's view, for example, placed a premium upon a woman's participation in her community, and assumed her prox- imity to institutions such as churches and schools. The mothers of antebellum Worcester were not rearing their children in iso- lated suburbs, but were part of a large community of women en- gaged in similar work.5 Most important, Abbott's works addressed the ways in which women themselves stood to benefit from good mothering. The mother-child relationship is, afrer all, an economic as well as an emotional and physical bond. In the early nineteenth century this economic tie took on new significance when the developing mar- ket economy undermined traditional social safety nets. Women's labor, although vital to the work force, was greatly undervalued, and women's economic opportunities were severely limited. In contrast, motherhood held out the promise of social security in old age. Abbott's self-consciously evangehcal portrayal of moth- erhood was positive, even empowering: the rational, imperial, empirical mother, the mother as domestic Napoleon. Defining good mothering not as self-negation but as self-protection was a central theme for the Reverend Mr.